Black and grey realistic wing tattoo on the upper back with script reading A brother's love will forever protect you, beside a grey Chinese character.

Wing and script tattoo on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black and grey wing sits across the upper back, with the script words A brother's love will forever protect you beneath it. The feathers use smooth grey shading with fine outlines, and the lettering is crisp black linework. A grey Chinese character and partial grey designs appear to the right and at the top edge of the frame.

Realism Lettering Back Shoulder Wing Feather Script text Quote Chinese character Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, the band's gone off for their tea and I've got until the drummer finds his other shoe. You want the story of the Marsh brothers? Right. Eddie was the elder, all elbows and temper, and Stan was the little one who trailed after him everywhere, including the back row of the Palais at Hollin Cross on a Saturday night when he was far too young for it.

Keep reading

One night a lad called Rourke put Stan on the sawdust with a single punch. Eddie didn't shout. He walked across the floor, lifted Stan by the collar and carried him past the cloakroom, where old Lo Wing was counting coats. Lo ran the laundry on Briar Street and kept a tiger painted on the side of his van. He took a pencil stub from behind his ear and drew a character on the back of a cloakroom ticket. A tiger, he said, tapping it. That is your brother. All teeth and no sense, but he will bite for you. Eddie folded the ticket into his wallet and never once took it out to show anyone.

Eddie went to sea the spring after, and the postcards came from ports nobody on Briar Street could pronounce. The last one had a grey gull feather taped inside and four lines in his big, careless hand. Stan read it so many times the card went soft at the corners.

Stan kept that feather sewn into his coat lining for forty years. Whenever a row started near the cloakroom he'd feel it press against his ribs, and he'd walk over and stand in the doorway with his arms folded, the way his brother used to. Nobody ever asked him to. Right, that's the band back. Mind the step on your way out.